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“Just remember that those at the fort are your people, so expect understanding and kindness,” Brave Wolf said, reaching a hand to her cheek. “You are a brave, courageous woman. Now is the time to use that courage.”
“I believe I know what is truly causing my hesitation,” she said, searching his eyes. “It is because I have to leave you. I’m so afraid that something might happen and I may never see you again.”
“When you are ready to return to me, I will be there, waiting,” he promised. “I have not survived these twenty-five winters of my life to allow something to happen to me now that I have found you. True love only comes once in a lifetime. Never shall I let anything jeopardize it.”
“Then I shall go on my way with a much lighter heart,” Mary Beth said. She took his hand, kissed its palm, then slowly released it. “I shall go on now. Perhaps I shall find my son already safe in the hands of the soldiers.”
“Had you thought that
possible, nothing would have kept you from coming to this fort before now,” Brave Wolf said, his voice drawn. “No, my woman, do not expect to find your son at the fort. But do expect to find people who are willing to search for him.”
“Yes, I know they will, for who would not want to assure the safety and well-being of a child . . . except for people like those who stole him from me,” Mary Beth said.
She inhaled a deep, shaky breath, gazed at the fort again, then smiled at Brave Wolf. “Goodbye, my love,” she said. “I shall return to your arms as soon as I find something out about David.”
“Faith . . . hope . . . love . . .” Brave Wolf said. “They will get you through these next hours.”
He reached over and placed a hand at the nape of her neck. He drew her close and gave her a long, deep kiss, then dropped his hand away and watched her ride from him.
He dismounted, tied his reins to a low limb, then went and knelt behind a stand of bushes. He parted their branches to get a better look at the fort, and those who would open the gate to his woman.
Then he suddenly noticed something that Mary Beth surely had forgotten. The clothes she wore were not clothes ordinarily worn by a white woman. She was still wearing the doeskin dress his mother had given her.
He wanted to cry out to warn her, but he knew that the wind would carry his voice to the soldiers. They would have double cause to be alarmed if they saw a woman dressed in doeskin and heard the cry of a red man calling her name!
“Tread softly and warily, my woman,” he whispered, his spine stiffening as she drew closer and closer to the fort on the steed that had been his for so long but was now hers. His jaw tightened when he saw the tall, wide gate slowly opening.
He watched with bated breath as a soldier came from the gate, brandishing a rifle. Brave Wolf’s hand went to his bow as Mary Beth stopped beside the soldier, then dismounted while he took her reins in one hand, still holding his rifle in the other.
When Brave Wolf saw that she was not going to be harmed, he slid his hand away from the bow and watched until she and her horse disappeared inside the fort with the soldier.
He was unnerved about the whole situation. He felt so bad about forgetting how she was dressed, but even if he had remembered, nothing could have been different. There were none of the clothes worn by white women at his village. She would still have arrived in Indian attire.
He could not leave just yet. His eyes remained locked on the gate. His ears remained alert to any noise coming from inside the walls.
If he heard a woman scream, his heart would be turned inside out, for surely it would be Mary Beth!
Mary Beth scarcely breathed as she walked into the fort. The soldier had taken her horse and tied it to a hitching rail, while another soldier had stepped up and was now escorting her to the large cabin in the center of the courtyard.
She knew forts well enough to know that it was the colonel’s dwelling and main office.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw that all activity at the fort had stopped. She could feel eyes on her, watching her every move.
When she looked at one soldier at length, she saw a strange expression of disgust in his eyes.
And she had not even been questioned by the soldier who had met her at the gate. She had just been told that he would take her immediately to Colonel Downing. The cold look in his eyes as he had looked her slowly up and down still made her uneasy.
Then it came to her like a bolt of lightning. The dress. The moccasins. Her hair, which she had worn in braids these past two days. Everything about her, except her skin and hair color, looked Indian.
A sudden flush heated her face as she looked guardedly from man to man. She could not help wondering if they could tell she had made love with an Indian.
To all white men, a woman was no longer worth anything if a red man had “soiled” her. They couldn’t know that she had made love to Brave Wolf, but it was obvious that she had been among Indians.
Would the colonel even be willing to help her find David? Would he condemn her for how she was dressed and dismiss her as an Indian lover?
Except for what Brave Wolf had said about this colonel, she didn’t know anything about him. But from what Brave Wolf had told her, she knew that he was not a compassionate man and that he despised Indians.
Did he hate them enough to make her pay for wearing the clothes of an Indian maiden?
